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LOVE IN DIFFERENT AGES: WHAT IS YOUR CHANCE OF HAVING A VITAL MARRIAGE?
Robert Atchley and Sheila Miller\'s study, discussed earlier, implies that one key to a vital marriage is having the externals in place. Their happy Ohio couples had enough money, had good health, and were living in a close-knit, crime-free community. Clues to what will happen later also may be apparent early on. People who are delighted with one another after years of marriage say they were always very happy with their mates. On the other hand, starting out a marriage without love or loving less than fully is a bad sign; although love can deepen over the years, rarely does something grow from absolutely nothing.
It\'s my fiftieth wedding anniversary, and I\'m hitter. I am married to a person who shares none of my interests. My husband is an alcoholic loudmouth. Can\'t tell him anything. He is stubborn and flares into a rage at the least little thing. He loves me - or says he does - but I do not love him. I never have, and how I wish I really knew what love is! You see, I got married out of need at a low point in my life. I was in a car accident that left me partially paralyzed, feeling terribly unlovable and sorry for myself, and he was the first man who came along.
As a fascinating 1987 research report shows, perhaps the most important clue lies in one\'s personality and the personality of one\'s spouse. Lowell Kelly of the University of Michigan and James Conley of Wesleyan University studied several hundred married couples over a forty-five-year period, tracing their lives from their engagement in 1935 through 1980.
Twenty-two couples broke their engagements, and fifty got divorced over the years. Another group stayed unhappily married, together by default. Of the many factors the investigators examined - stressful events during the marriage, education, occupation - these failed relationships were distinguished more by the psychological instability of their participants than by anything else. A man rated as emotionally disturbed at the time of his engagement was likely to have marital problems. A neurotic new bride was set up for an unhappy marriage or a future divorce.
Whether a couple stayed together and was miserable or got divorced after years of marriage turned out to be a function of the man\'s personality. Neurotic men with low \"impulse control\" - those who acted out their misery - were prone to engage in behavior (such as having affairs) that would force an unhappy union to end. If a man was neurotic but high in impulse control, he did not act on his unhappiness, and so the couple tended to stay married. In other words, in depression-era marriages, at least, the man holds sway over the union\'s fate. Not only do his actions initiate a marriage, they terminate it.
*55/159/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
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